E.R.
24
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF
BRITISH COUNCIL FOR AID TO REFUGEES - 24TH MARCH
SPEECH BY MINISTER OF STATE (MR. RAISON)
see 20
I should like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity to
speak to the Annual General Meeting of the British Council
for Aid to Refugees. It is some time now since some of us were
working together in connection with World Refugee Year and it
is a great pleasure for me to be with you today and to see so
many old friends gathered together again.
It is a sad characteristic of today's world that hundreds of thousands
of unfortunate people increasingly find themselves forced out of their homes and countries and compelled to join the ever-swelling
ranks of the world's refugees. The tragic human problems that
arise from mass movements of people across both land and sea
frontiers are not now confined to one country or one continent. In the past year we have all seen on our television screens the
reality of this situation and we have been moved by the human needs that have been so vividly presented to us. What a reproachful mirror television so often holds up to our so-called
civilisation!
/The prosont